Responses to young children in post-emergency situations

Guest Editorial
Margaret McCallin*
The contributions to this edition of Early
Childhood Matters describe experience and practice
developed by a number of organisations who work
with children in emergencies, including natural
and man-made disasters, and the many lessons that
have been learned that agencies have integrated
into their work.
To fit my own experience into the work described,
perhaps I could begin with a personal reflection.
My first meeting with young people affected by
political violence and the displacement occasioned
by their involvement was in Botswana in 1977.
This was the first time I was confronted by the
consequences of political violence.
My husband was working for unhcr, and as a
result of his work we got to know the secondaryschool
students who had come to Botswana as
refugees following the Soweto uprisings in 1976.
From time to time, some of these young people
would come to our house to talk, have a cup of
tea, and play with our children. But there was one
boy who touched me deeply. Whenever he came
he spent a lot of time playing with our little cat.
In our conversations, he told me that the best part
of coming home to us, was playing with the cat,
because that reminded him of his home in Soweto
where his mother had a little cat, and he missed
his mother.
To talk of missing your mother speaks of all the
losses that are implicit in being forcibly displaced
for a child or adolescent. At the time, although
there were a range of services available to help the
South African students, we had little in the way of
language or terminology to understand how these
young people had been affected by their experience
of and participation in political violence. Nor was
there a framework within which any response could
be implemented to address their needs.
In the intervening years, much has changed for the
good, not least the important degree of collaboration
that now exists between agencies: a shared approach
and common concerns that inform the response
to children in conflict and emergency situations.
The integration of experience and interagency
cooperation is evident 1 , for example, in the
procedures that have been developed for the care
and protection of unaccompanied and separated
children. The benefits of this collaboration were
evident in the immediate response to children
affected by the Asian tsunami – within days,
collaborating agencies (icrc, unhcr, unicef, World
Vision International, Save the Children uk and the
International Rescue Committee) had produced the
guiding principles for the care of unaccompanied
and separated children, and psychosocial care and
protection (see page 33).
The Convention on the Rights of the Child and child
rights programming
The near universal ratification of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (crc) has brought about
the most significant change in our understanding
and response to children in emergencies. When
governments, international organisations and ngos
were engaged in the drafting process of the crc,
children’s needs were emphasised more than rights.
Since the ratification of the crc there has been less
of an emphasis on children and their communities
as ‘beneficiaries’ of child-focused programmes,
and more on the need to establish partnerships, to
see children as ‘rights holders’ and to assess how
programmes enable children to access their rights.
* Margaret McCallin is Coordinator of Programmes at the International Catholic Child Bureau. Since 1977 she has lived and
worked in a number of countries in Africa, Asia and Europe and the USA assessing the psychosocial impact of war and violent
displacement on children and families, and in programme development to address these issues. For some years the focus of
her work was on the situation of child soldiers, in particular programmes of demobilisation and social reintegration.
She is now working in the area of children’s rights and resilience, and the development of programmes to address the
contextual issues of discrimination, poverty and social marginalisation that put children at risk and violate their rights.
B e r n a r d v a n L e e r Fo u n d a t i o n 4 E a r l y C h i l d h o o d M a t t e r s • Ju l y 2 0 0 5